Gotham GazetteGotham Gazette is an online publication covering New York policy and politics as well as news on public safety, transportation, education, finance and more.http://www.gothamgazette.com/component/tags/tag/resiliency2017-12-14T00:32:17+00:00Webmasterwebmaster@gothamgazette.comSuggestions for Better Disaster Relief from Former HUD Leader2017-07-25T19:36:45+00:002017-07-25T19:36:45+00:00http://www.gothamgazette.com/?id=7085:suggestions-for-better-disaster-relief-from-former-hud-leaderBen Max<p><img src="http://www.gothamgazette.com/images/graphics/34209726002_1556c955c3_z.jpg" alt="NYC Ferries" width="600" height="399" /></p>
<p>NYC Ferries (Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)</p>
<hr />
<p>As the city approaches the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged the eastern seaboard and wrecked homes and businesses in New York’s coastal communities, a new report says there is more work to be done to prepare for the next storm.</p>
<p>Former HUD regional administrator for New York and New Jersey Holly Leicht, who oversaw the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s $15.2 billion Superstorm Sandy recovery program, presented <a href="http://communityp.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMPROVING-DISASTER-RECOVERY-PAPER-FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a report</a> last week with 41 recommendations for how the government at the federal, state and local levels could better approach natural disaster preparedness and recovery. Leicht’s report was the centerpiece of a symposium sponsored by the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), a nonprofit organization that deals with affordable housing for underserved communities, and the Staten Island Borough President’s office.</p>
<p>The 51-page report includes numerous proposals for stronger coordination between federal and local authorities in the wake of a disaster, streamlined funding for disaster relief, improved communication with affected communities and reduced bureaucratic hurdles in disaster response.</p>
<p>For instance, Leicht suggests creating a single disaster relief website where individuals could go to seek assistance from multiple agencies, making a single office in charge of disaster recovery, and instituting fundamental readiness standards. She floats the idea of giving HUD the authority to appropriate disaster recovery funding, encourages standardization of disaster relief funds to prioritize low- and middle-income families, and recommends that Congress and White House allocate additional tax credits to replace lost rental housing units with new affordable housing.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“This is something we can accomplish without our heads exploding,” Leicht joked in her opening remarks at the CPC conference. “We’re making incremental change in an area where we need to be making drastic change and fast change.”</p>
<p>Asked what she would say to critics who might question the cost of such reforms, Leich told Gotham Gazette, “I think my message is that a lot of these things are cost neutral. Out of 41, we could probably do 25 without expending much money or having to change laws. The key thing is having leadership to get started.”</p>
<p>From 2011 to 2013 alone, the federal government spent a total of $136 billion on disaster recovery. Leicht argued that not nearly enough funding is being spent on mitigation to prevent damage from future natural disasters. According to her report, prioritizing mitigation can save $1.2 billion in funding annually.</p>
<p>“I know this is difficult,” said Staten Island Borough President James Oddo, who participated in the panel discussion during the event. “We, as government, made mistakes...I’m not trying to pick a fight with a billionaire ex-mayor, I had plenty of dials with that administration back in the day. I’m not trying to tug on the current mayor’s cape, but I owe it to my constituents to make sure there’s a process that is frank about what went wrong.”</p>
<p>One of the major criticisms regarding the recovery effort after Sandy is the amount of time it took to repair and restore homes that had been destroyed. According to Leicht, 18 months was considered the gold standard as to when individuals could expect to move back into their homes after Sandy, and many homeowners were not aware of this.</p>
<p>“I absolutely believe had my constituents known that they were looking at an 18-month, two year, three year, five year process, they would have made different decisions,” Oddo said. Many are still not back in their homes as the five-year anniversary of the storm approaches this fall.</p>
<p>There also seems to be lingering confusion around how recovery is defined in government agencies that are supposed to be providing relief to victims. Recovery could simply mean making sure the person affected by the disaster is able to get back on their feet, or it could also mean that recovery has not been achieved until the victim has been fully compensated for what was lost.</p>
<p>“We’ve gotta make some substantive changes here,” said Brad Gair, former director of Housing Recovery Operations in New York City and currently the senior managing director of Witt O’Brien’s, a private sector crisis and disaster management firm. “This recovery was a disaster. We failed the people of New York -- I’m talking from a city perspective. The problem is, what are we trying to do here? When we talk about post-disaster housing have we ever had the discussion of: do people, who lost their houses because of a disaster, are they entitled to a new home at the government’s expense? I’m not saying yes or no. I’m saying we’ve gotta talk about that. Until you talk about that, you get what you get.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the city and state have taken some steps to safeguard against future damage caused by hurricanes. For example, some properties in coastal areas that are at risk of being impacted by storms are being bought by the government to prevent individuals from moving back in.</p>
<p>But Oddo concluded with some cautionary words for lawmakers and administrators. “Be careful of the struggle between building quickly and building smartly,” he said. “We were so careful we did neither.”</p>
<p>

</p><p><img src="http://www.gothamgazette.com/images/graphics/34209726002_1556c955c3_z.jpg" alt="NYC Ferries" width="600" height="399" /></p>
<p>NYC Ferries (Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)</p>
<hr />
<p>As the city approaches the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged the eastern seaboard and wrecked homes and businesses in New York’s coastal communities, a new report says there is more work to be done to prepare for the next storm.</p>
<p>Former HUD regional administrator for New York and New Jersey Holly Leicht, who oversaw the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s $15.2 billion Superstorm Sandy recovery program, presented <a href="http://communityp.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMPROVING-DISASTER-RECOVERY-PAPER-FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a report</a> last week with 41 recommendations for how the government at the federal, state and local levels could better approach natural disaster preparedness and recovery. Leicht’s report was the centerpiece of a symposium sponsored by the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), a nonprofit organization that deals with affordable housing for underserved communities, and the Staten Island Borough President’s office.</p>
<p>The 51-page report includes numerous proposals for stronger coordination between federal and local authorities in the wake of a disaster, streamlined funding for disaster relief, improved communication with affected communities and reduced bureaucratic hurdles in disaster response.</p>
<p>For instance, Leicht suggests creating a single disaster relief website where individuals could go to seek assistance from multiple agencies, making a single office in charge of disaster recovery, and instituting fundamental readiness standards. She floats the idea of giving HUD the authority to appropriate disaster recovery funding, encourages standardization of disaster relief funds to prioritize low- and middle-income families, and recommends that Congress and White House allocate additional tax credits to replace lost rental housing units with new affordable housing.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“This is something we can accomplish without our heads exploding,” Leicht joked in her opening remarks at the CPC conference. “We’re making incremental change in an area where we need to be making drastic change and fast change.”</p>
<p>Asked what she would say to critics who might question the cost of such reforms, Leich told Gotham Gazette, “I think my message is that a lot of these things are cost neutral. Out of 41, we could probably do 25 without expending much money or having to change laws. The key thing is having leadership to get started.”</p>
<p>From 2011 to 2013 alone, the federal government spent a total of $136 billion on disaster recovery. Leicht argued that not nearly enough funding is being spent on mitigation to prevent damage from future natural disasters. According to her report, prioritizing mitigation can save $1.2 billion in funding annually.</p>
<p>“I know this is difficult,” said Staten Island Borough President James Oddo, who participated in the panel discussion during the event. “We, as government, made mistakes...I’m not trying to pick a fight with a billionaire ex-mayor, I had plenty of dials with that administration back in the day. I’m not trying to tug on the current mayor’s cape, but I owe it to my constituents to make sure there’s a process that is frank about what went wrong.”</p>
<p>One of the major criticisms regarding the recovery effort after Sandy is the amount of time it took to repair and restore homes that had been destroyed. According to Leicht, 18 months was considered the gold standard as to when individuals could expect to move back into their homes after Sandy, and many homeowners were not aware of this.</p>
<p>“I absolutely believe had my constituents known that they were looking at an 18-month, two year, three year, five year process, they would have made different decisions,” Oddo said. Many are still not back in their homes as the five-year anniversary of the storm approaches this fall.</p>
<p>There also seems to be lingering confusion around how recovery is defined in government agencies that are supposed to be providing relief to victims. Recovery could simply mean making sure the person affected by the disaster is able to get back on their feet, or it could also mean that recovery has not been achieved until the victim has been fully compensated for what was lost.</p>
<p>“We’ve gotta make some substantive changes here,” said Brad Gair, former director of Housing Recovery Operations in New York City and currently the senior managing director of Witt O’Brien’s, a private sector crisis and disaster management firm. “This recovery was a disaster. We failed the people of New York -- I’m talking from a city perspective. The problem is, what are we trying to do here? When we talk about post-disaster housing have we ever had the discussion of: do people, who lost their houses because of a disaster, are they entitled to a new home at the government’s expense? I’m not saying yes or no. I’m saying we’ve gotta talk about that. Until you talk about that, you get what you get.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the city and state have taken some steps to safeguard against future damage caused by hurricanes. For example, some properties in coastal areas that are at risk of being impacted by storms are being bought by the government to prevent individuals from moving back in.</p>
<p>But Oddo concluded with some cautionary words for lawmakers and administrators. “Be careful of the struggle between building quickly and building smartly,” he said. “We were so careful we did neither.”</p>
<p>

</p>Building in the Wrong Places: A Pivotal Choice2016-12-11T05:00:00+00:002016-12-11T05:00:00+00:00http://www.gothamgazette.com/?id=6661:building-in-the-wrong-places-a-pivotal-choiceBen Max<p><img src="http://www.gothamgazette.com/images/hudson_river_park_aerial.jpg" alt="hudson river park aerial" width="600" height="398" /></p>
<p>photo: Hudson River Park Trust</p>
<hr />
<p>Building sites for so-called "parks" or other misplaced uses in or over the water offshore is a ruinous policy. Unprecedented proposals now before the City Council to help finance such in-water construction by selling legally dubious "air rights" (supposedly unused development rights) from sites in the lower Hudson River--starting with Pier 40--or other public waterways to mega-developers would magnify this harmful policy's potentially catastrophic citywide impacts.</p>
<p>Joanne Witty's <a href="http://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/6646-building-and-maintaining-parks-in-new-york-city-a-reality-check" target="_blank">Dec. 2 op-ed</a> contained misrepresentations used by both the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation to market the in-water parts of these public authorities' projects. In both cases, the green space on dry land under their purview is genuine parkland. But the real estate these authorities plan to keep rebuilding in the water in the guise of a park is not.</p>
<p>The public waterway in the lower Hudson River--the natural resource now under the gravest immediate threat--is not a "park.” The River's priceless nearshore waters are the worst possible place to build or rebuild real estate for any non-water-dependent use. The 490 acres of open waters and piers and other structures under HRPT's jurisdiction are in a #1 (highest risk) hurricane evacuation zone, so building sites to attract more people to the river at that location puts too many people in harm's way in deadly storms. These waters are also an irreplaceable aquatic habitat for living marine resources, including valuable coastal fisheries. And the river's open waters are a treasured public open space resource for many thousands of New Yorkers.</p>
<p>Some good reporting on the risks to human life and property from building real estate offshore followed right after Superstorm Sandy, but since then too many investigative reporters have been asleep at the switch. The staggering risks to public safety from Hudson River development are matched only by the risks to city finances and to sensible public spending priorities, since under disastrous 2013 state legislation city and state taxpayers would be&nbsp;on the hook for storm and hurricane damage costs and&nbsp;liability claims and disaster recovery costs&nbsp;-- potentially billions of dollars worth, based on Superstorm Sandy.</p>
<p>Stealth 2013 amendments to the Hudson River Park Act approved when now-convicted State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos were still in office shifted massive financial risks to taxpayers. This appalling package of 2013 amendments also paved the way for this week's "air rights transfers from the Hudson River" City Council proposals (LU 0506-2016 and related actions).</p>
<p>None of the Council's large staff had made timely, accurate information about these complex proposals public before crucial Council subcommittee and committee actions Dec. 5, despite an outpouring of opposition from Sierra Club, Clean Air Campaign, Friends of the Earth, and other activists. If the full Council approves and signs off on unprecedented, legally dubious "air rights" transfers from public waterways on Dec. 15, high-risk, complex financing schemes are likely to follow.</p>
<p>For what purpose? To implement a budget-busting, legally dubious, environmentally destructive, astronomically expensive 1960s policy that would unleash totally avoidable risks on New Yorkers today—along with swarms of “air rights” poised to land on any neighborhood where politicians want to make a deal to misuse our air, water and land.</p>
<p>That policy (building and rebuilding in-water development sites offshore) should be firmly rejected by any City Council member who values public safety, disaster prevention, genuine sustainability and resiliency policies that work, and fairer, wiser city spending priorities.</p>
<p>***<br />Marcy Benstock is executive director of Clean Air Campaign and its Open Rivers Project. Clean Air Campaign shares the website <a href="http://westwaythenandnow.org/" target="_blank">www.WestwayThenandNow.org </a>with other groups.</p>
<p>

</p><p><img src="http://www.gothamgazette.com/images/hudson_river_park_aerial.jpg" alt="hudson river park aerial" width="600" height="398" /></p>
<p>photo: Hudson River Park Trust</p>
<hr />
<p>Building sites for so-called "parks" or other misplaced uses in or over the water offshore is a ruinous policy. Unprecedented proposals now before the City Council to help finance such in-water construction by selling legally dubious "air rights" (supposedly unused development rights) from sites in the lower Hudson River--starting with Pier 40--or other public waterways to mega-developers would magnify this harmful policy's potentially catastrophic citywide impacts.</p>
<p>Joanne Witty's <a href="http://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/6646-building-and-maintaining-parks-in-new-york-city-a-reality-check" target="_blank">Dec. 2 op-ed</a> contained misrepresentations used by both the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation to market the in-water parts of these public authorities' projects. In both cases, the green space on dry land under their purview is genuine parkland. But the real estate these authorities plan to keep rebuilding in the water in the guise of a park is not.</p>
<p>The public waterway in the lower Hudson River--the natural resource now under the gravest immediate threat--is not a "park.” The River's priceless nearshore waters are the worst possible place to build or rebuild real estate for any non-water-dependent use. The 490 acres of open waters and piers and other structures under HRPT's jurisdiction are in a #1 (highest risk) hurricane evacuation zone, so building sites to attract more people to the river at that location puts too many people in harm's way in deadly storms. These waters are also an irreplaceable aquatic habitat for living marine resources, including valuable coastal fisheries. And the river's open waters are a treasured public open space resource for many thousands of New Yorkers.</p>
<p>Some good reporting on the risks to human life and property from building real estate offshore followed right after Superstorm Sandy, but since then too many investigative reporters have been asleep at the switch. The staggering risks to public safety from Hudson River development are matched only by the risks to city finances and to sensible public spending priorities, since under disastrous 2013 state legislation city and state taxpayers would be&nbsp;on the hook for storm and hurricane damage costs and&nbsp;liability claims and disaster recovery costs&nbsp;-- potentially billions of dollars worth, based on Superstorm Sandy.</p>
<p>Stealth 2013 amendments to the Hudson River Park Act approved when now-convicted State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos were still in office shifted massive financial risks to taxpayers. This appalling package of 2013 amendments also paved the way for this week's "air rights transfers from the Hudson River" City Council proposals (LU 0506-2016 and related actions).</p>
<p>None of the Council's large staff had made timely, accurate information about these complex proposals public before crucial Council subcommittee and committee actions Dec. 5, despite an outpouring of opposition from Sierra Club, Clean Air Campaign, Friends of the Earth, and other activists. If the full Council approves and signs off on unprecedented, legally dubious "air rights" transfers from public waterways on Dec. 15, high-risk, complex financing schemes are likely to follow.</p>
<p>For what purpose? To implement a budget-busting, legally dubious, environmentally destructive, astronomically expensive 1960s policy that would unleash totally avoidable risks on New Yorkers today—along with swarms of “air rights” poised to land on any neighborhood where politicians want to make a deal to misuse our air, water and land.</p>
<p>That policy (building and rebuilding in-water development sites offshore) should be firmly rejected by any City Council member who values public safety, disaster prevention, genuine sustainability and resiliency policies that work, and fairer, wiser city spending priorities.</p>
<p>***<br />Marcy Benstock is executive director of Clean Air Campaign and its Open Rivers Project. Clean Air Campaign shares the website <a href="http://westwaythenandnow.org/" target="_blank">www.WestwayThenandNow.org </a>with other groups.</p>
<p>